Samuel L. Jackson is calling it as he sees it. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the legendary actor spoke about growing up during segregation. He drew similarities between the ‘rednecks’ who called him racial slurs back then, to the political rise of Donald Trump.
“When I grew up in segregation, I knew which white people didn’t want to be bothered with me, and I knew how they felt about me,” the “Pulp Fiction” actor said during his interview with Rolling Stone.
“When I see Trump, I see the same rednecks I saw when I was growing up … [who] tried to keep me in my place,” Jackson said. He also said the rednecks would throw racist insults at him.
“That’s what the Republican Party is to me.”
“They’re doing it to young people, gay people. They don’t care who you are,” Jackson, 74, who was raised in Tennessee as a child, added. “If you’re not them, you’re the enemy.”
Jackson’s remarks on Trump came when asked about serving as an usher at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
“The world seems to be in as hard a place as it’s always been. As a child of the ’60s, watching what happened at the 1968 Democratic Convention and seeing the police beating those demonstrators — and those were young white kids — I learned there’s a certain kind of thing that the powers that be don’t want us doing,” Jackson responded.
“One of them is protesting what they think they want us to do.”
“So when George Floyd happened, it was great to see all the different faces of kids out there fighting the injustice and what the power was doing once again to keep you from having an open mind or keep you from creating change that is not the change they want made,” Jackson said, referring to the nationwide protests over the brutal death of Floyd in 2020.
“That part has not changed. In my opinion, it’s kind of worse. They used to hide it. Now, they don’t hide it anymore!”
Jackson’s feelings for Trump aren’t new; in 2019, he blamed Trump for “ruining the planet.”
“If you’re not saying anything,” Jackson said at the time, “then you’re complicit.”
Samuel L Jackson, On point as usual!!